Former U.S. solicitor general and independent counsel Kenneth Starr is headed back to private practice as he prepares to join Houston-based trial boutique The Lanier Law Firm as counsel.

Starr's decision to join the firm founded in 1990 by Starr's longtime friend and personal attorney, plaintiffs bar titan W. Mark Lanier, was a result of years of collaboration between both lawyers, he said in a statement issued to the Texas Lawyer.

“I've known [Lanier] personally and professionally for many years,” Starr said in prepared remarks. “I've always been impressed by his firm's commitment to seeking justice for individuals and the public at large.”

In late 2016, following Starr's resignation earlier that year as president and chancellor of Baylor University in Waco, Texas, he joined Lanier's appellate litigation team in a case against Johnson & Johnson and its subsidiary, DePuy Orthopaedics Inc., over allegedly defective hip implants. A jury in that suit initially awarded $1.04 billion to the plaintiffs, although that verdict was subsequently cut in half by a Dallas judge and eventually tossed out earlier this year by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

“During the past two years, I've worked with [The Lanier Law Firm] on some specific appellate matters, and Mark and I decided that it was time to formalize that relationship,” Starr said in his statement Monday. “This was not a responsibility I was actively seeking, but is a natural outgrowth of our common interests and the good we believe we can do together.”

In response to criticism of Lanier over his role in the DePuy Orthopaedics case, Starr penned an article last year for The National Law Journal defending the well-known trial lawyer's character. Lanier has done the same for Starr.

When Starr was dismissed at Baylor two years ago amid a brewing scandal at the school involving sexual assaults against women, Lanier emerged as a vocal defender, telling the Texas Lawyer at the time that Starr “doesn't tolerate injustice” and was made a “fall guy” by the university's board of regents.

Starr has had a long, storied career both in and out of public service.

Following clerkships with Judge David Dyer of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger, Starr joined Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in 1977 in Washington, D.C. Five years later, Starr was appointed counselor to former U.S. Attorney General William French Smith. In 1983, Starr was nominated by President Ronald Reagan to a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Starr resigned from the federal bench in 1989 in order to become U.S. solicitor general under President George H.W. Bush. He remained in that position until the end of that administration in early 1993, when he joined Kirkland & Ellis as a partner in Washington, D.C. In August 1994, Starr replaced current Davis Polk & Wardwell senior counsel Robert Fiske Jr. as independent counsel responsible for overseeing several investigations involving the Clinton administration, including Whitewater and the Monica Lewinsky scandal that ultimately led to the December 1998 impeachment of President Bill Clinton.

Last week, a nearly 20-year-old report drafted by current U.S. Supreme Court nominee and former Starr deputy Brett Kavanaugh regarding potential violations of grand jury secrecy during Starr's investigations was unsealed in anticipation of Kavanaugh's confirmation hearing on Sept. 4. The report cleared the independent counsel's office of leaking information.

After five years as independent counsel, Starr left the role in September 1998 after issuing his report. He then returned to Kirkland, where he won acclaim as an appellate litigator, serving as of counsel at the firm after agreeing in early 2004 to become dean of the Pepperdine University School of Law. After six years at the Malibu, California-based school, Starr left in 2010 to join Baylor as president. He was named chancellor of the university in 2013.

But following an investigation by Pepper Hamilton into Baylor's response to claims of sexual assault by students, Starr resigned in August 2016 from his leadership role and as a law professor at the school. Starr himself was well-compensated by Baylor, whose most recent federal tax filing for 2016-17 revealed that its former chancellor received nearly $4.98 million in total compensation during that fiscal year. (Other tax filings by Baylor show that Starr received nearly $1.4 million in 2015-16 and $1.02 million in 2014-15.)

In joining The Lanier Law Firm, Starr joins an outfit that remains one of the elite among the trial bar. In July, ALM announced that its Outstanding Trial Lawyer Award would be given to Lanier at an Oct. 5 event in Las Vegas.

“[Starr] could have his pick of national and international firms with whom to work, and we are honored that he chose us,” Lanier said in a statement.

Lanier, who began his legal career in 1984 at Norton Rose Fulbright predecessor firm Fulbright & Jaworski, founded his Houston-based firm in 1990. The Lanier Law Firm specializes in civil trial work ranging from personal injury cases to corporate disputes. Over the years the firm has grown into a nearly 60-lawyer outfit with additional offices in Los Angeles and New York.

In April 2014, Lanier won a record $9 billion verdict against Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. and Eli Lilly & Co. over the diabetes drug Actos, although that award would later be reduced to $36.8 million on appeal. Lanier also represented 22 women in a suit against Johnson & Johnson over talcum powder that plaintiffs claimed contained asbestos and resulted in ovarian cancer. In July, a Missouri jury awarded those women $4.69 billion in damages.

In his statement about Starr joining his firm, Lanier lavished further praise on his new colleague.

“Not only is Judge Starr a great advocate of constitutional issues in the courtroom, but he also has been a tireless advocate throughout his career for those who face persecution based on their religious beliefs, regardless of the foundation of those beliefs,” said Lanier, noting that Starr also teaches biblical literacy at Champion Forest Baptist Church in Houston and is a founder of the Christian Trial Lawyers Association.

Aside from making moves in his legal career, Starr's latest book, “Contempt: A Memoir of the Clinton Investigation,” is scheduled to be released on Sept. 11.